Haunted Words, Haunted Selves: Listening to Otherness within Western Thought

By Colby Dickinson

We are all haunted by things we fear, repress, and those things of which we have no conscious knowledge. We are thus haunted by a variety of "ghosts" in our lives so that, at times, we might notice those things we have ignored, and so too allow the repressed elements of our world a chance to speak more directly to us. Being honest with ourselves means listening better to what haunts us, and to wrestle with our own ghosts, as humans have often claimed throughout history to wrestle with God. Recognizing how we are ceaselessly haunted by that which threatens to undo our representations of ourselves is what draws together a series of reflections in this book on how we will never be able to rid ourselves of such hauntings. By examining a series of "hauntings," this study looks at what continues to haunt the field of continental philosophy, the various things that haunt our sovereign construction of ourselves, the church, our words and language in general, and even how our texts are endlessly haunted by the autobiographical "I" we are often taught to exclude from our writings.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Cascade Books
• Release date: Mar 22, 2024
• ISBN: 9781666769234

Colby Dickinson

Colby Dickinson is Associate Professor of Theology at Loyola University Chicago. He is the author of Agamben and Theology, Between the Canon and the Messiah: The Structure of Faith in Contemporary Continental Thought, Words Fail: Theology, Poetry, and the Challenge of Representation, and, most recently, Theology and Contemporary Continental Philosophy: The Centrality of a Negative Dialectics.

Book preview

Haunted Words,Haunted Selves

Listening to Otherness within Western Thought

Colby Dickinson

Haunted Words, Haunted Selves

Listening to Otherness within Western Thought

Copyright ©

2024

Colby Dickinson. All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in critical publications or reviews, no part of this book may be reproduced in any manner without prior written permission from the publisher. Write: Permissions, Wipf and Stock Publishers,

199

W.

8

th Ave., Suite

3

, Eugene, OR

97401

.

Cascade Books

An Imprint of Wipf and Stock Publishers

199

W.

8

th Ave., Suite

3

Eugene, OR

97401

www.wipfandstock.com

paperback isbn: 978-1-6667-6921-0

hardcover isbn: 978-1-6667-6922-7

ebook isbn: 978-1-6667-6923-4

Cataloguing-in-Publication data:

Names: Dickinson, Colby, author.

Title: Haunted words, haunted selves : listening to otherness within western thought / Colby Dickinson.

Description: Eugene, OR : Cascade Books,

2024

| Includes bibliographical references and index.

Identifiers:

isbn 978-1-6667-6921-0

(paperback) |

isbn 978-1-6667-6922-7

(hardcover) |

isbn 978-1-6667-6923-4

(ebook)

Subjects: LCSH: Other (Philosophy). | Postcolonialism. | Continental philosophy. | Philosophical theology.

Classification:

BT40 .D52 2024

(paperback) |

BT40 .D52

(ebook)

08/24/23

Table of Contents

Title Page

Acknowledgments

Preface

Introduction

Chapter 1: Haunting Continental Philosophy

Chapter 2: Haunting the Sovereign Self

Chapter 3: Haunting the Church

Chapter 4: Haunting Our Words

Chapter 5: Haunting Our Writing

Conclusion

Bibliography

What would it mean to welcome that which haunts European theology, continental philosophy, and those of us who find meaning in these traditions? How would welcoming excluded realities and ideas unsettle stabilized identities and norms? Wrestling with hauntings of the understandings of the self and world he continues to find meaningful, Colby Dickinson offers an honest and challenging political-theological reflection. This timely book makes a significant contribution to political theology and continental philosophy for both students and scholars.

—Joseph Drexler-Dreis, associate professor of theology, Xavier University of Louisiana

This is a book that I have been waiting for Colby Dickinson to publish: a comprehensive, accessible overview of his philosophy and theology. Whether you are new to his work or have been following the development of Dickinson’s thought throughout the years, this poignant, expressive, and deeply sincere book delivers on all fronts.

—Justin Sands, research fellow, University of the Free State

This book is wonderful. Colby Dickinson faces continental philosophical and theological traditions that formed him, but that also haunt him. Allied to thinkers that promote a turn regarding that tradition, an overture to interpretative forms of minorities and those from the Global South is unveiled. By contrasting hetero-biography to autobiography, he finds vigor to disempower sovereignty in its excluding structure. Refined literarily and conceptually, this work is very welcomed and necessary in times of extremism.

—Glauco Barsalini, professor of religious studies, Pontifical Catholic University of Campinas

Erudite as ever, this newest of Colby Dickinson’s books takes a self-reflexive turn. Situated autobiographically, it wrestles to account for what has so far remained unrecounted in his writing in the wake of continental philosophy. Tracing unsettling emergencies of those repressed others that haunt philosophical, ecclesial, and cultural traditions, it seeks to reckon with the formative impact of the marginalized on collective and individual identity and contributes to the search for ways of knowing that resist the totalitarian force of empire.

—

Judith Gruber, research professor of systematic theology, KU Leuven

Simply brilliant. Colby Dickinson’s Haunted Words, Haunted Selves is an intellectually stimulating, autobiographical, well-researched, yet extremely readable contribution to the contemporary philosophical debate. This book solidifies Dickinson’s position as an important voice in the realm of continental philosophy.

—Martin Koci, assistant professor of fundamental theology and dogmatic theology, KU Linz

Acknowledgments

Parts of the Introduction were originally presented at a talk given on ghosts at Loyola University Chicago in 2012. Many thanks to Aana Vigen for the invitation to give this talk and all of my wonderful colleagues there who attended, but also who have been so incredibly supportive of various parts of this research. For all the great conversations over the years, I want to thank Bret Lewis, Mara Brecht, Chris Skinner, Aana Vigen, Josefrayn Sanchez-Perry, Hugh Nicholson, Emily Cain, Hille Haker, John McCarthy, Susan Ross, Bob DiVito, Xueying Wang, Olivia Stewart Lester, Mark Lester, Edmondo Lupieri, Miguel Diaz, Devorah Schoenfeld, Yarina Liston, Teresa Calpino, Lauren O’Connell, Bill French, Tom Wetzel, and Jon Nilson.

Chapter 1 was originally a lecture delivered at Marquette University for a colloquium on narrative approaches to the self at the Center for the Advancement of the Humanities in April 2022. Many thanks to Ethan Vanderleek for the invitation, and to Jorge Montiel, Mariana Ortega, and Dan McAdams, and the many colloquium participants for the wonderful conversations there.

A small section of chapter 1 was first published as "Whose Fetish? A Response to Prof. J. Lorand Matory, Author of The Fetish Revisited: Marx, Freud, and the Gods Black People Make," The Religious Studies Project, October 5, 2020. https://www.religiousstudiesproject.com/response/whose-fetish/.

I owe a major debt to Justin Sands, for suggesting that I try to write a book like this one. It was his challenge that brought the current book into existence, and I am very grateful for his prodding to produce this work.

Many thanks are also due to Whitney Harper and Jack Nuelle for their fine editing and formatting skills.

Preface

It seems as if everyone I know who reads my work says to me at some point something like: Hey, you should try writing about what you do, but for ordinary people. I usually agree, but then find it difficult to write something in such a simple, direct way. My books have generally been dense academic exercises in philosophical and theological thinking. There is a rigor and language appropriate to each discipline that, in some ways, has to be respected. At the same time, my teaching has been straightforward and often in extremely plain terms, as I try to interest and excite students who have little background in formal, academic disciplines.

I realized at some point that when I am teaching, and I simplify my thoughts in order to speak directly to students in a way that they will understand, I am also synthesizing all of my writing. This is, however, something I have so far refrained from doing in my writing.

All of my writing has been produced without the demand of an audience for completion; I was finishing my thoughts in class, with students, in an abridged form and with clear and direct application and theses, which were subsequently missing in the books I wrote. I left all this out of my writing, which has a more scholarly and academic tone.

A friend of mine, however, recently challenged me to write a short book that takes all of my published writing into account and tries to tie it all together, offering insight into the large, sprawling body of work I have thus far fashioned. I accepted his challenge enthusiastically, as I knew that this task remained yet to be demonstrated, even and especially to myself.

This book is in many ways an attempt to reckon with what has haunted my thought, and all of my writing, but what I have not been able to say directly and in a concise manner. The issues that I have been reflecting on throughout this short and not entirely elegant book arrived on my desktop throughout the years as I immersed myself further and further in the philosophical, theological, and literary worlds that I inhabit from time to time. These are worlds, mind you, that I also inherited to some degree and which I sought to explore the limits of throughout my writing.

It is no surprise that most of what I have dealt with has been firmly western in its orientation, mostly Christian, and more often than not involving straight white male authors. In case there was any doubt about the Eurocentric nature of what I do, the tradition of philosophy that I follow closely is called continental philosophy by those who practice it—a reference to the only continent that would dare see itself as the only one not needing to be named distinctly. It’s like being asked what country I come from and saying that I hail from the country, which is pretty much what the more arrogant citizens of these United States are probably thinking anyway. My point is that not a lot of humility generated through self-critical awareness is generally present in such exercises.

I enjoy what I research, study, and write about, and I won’t soon be leaving the field of so-called continental philosophy behind. When you acquire an expertise in something because you have a passion for it, you tend to stick with it for the long haul. This being said, I have to confess that the lack of a true comparative understanding of our world’s many philosophies is not just startling, it is a product of the colonialist, imperialist, racist, and sexist legacies that have permeated the West for centuries.

Sure, I found my academic love because of the background I came from. Being raised Protestant in the state of Illinois, in a county with near zero racial or ethnic diversity, the classics of western thought appealed to me immediately as a bit of my story written by my ancestors in some sense. After working through so many texts and having written so many books and hopefully having deepened my understanding of many issues that I had no idea were so complex and so enriching to discuss, I still find myself saying (mostly to myself, but now to you): You know, maybe some ancient Chinese philosophers had a better grasp of a particular ethical issue than either Plato or Aristotle did. Or, perhaps we might get further as a nation utilizing the African political philosophy of ubuntu rather than looking once again to Hobbes’s theory of human nature. Or, perhaps posed as a question to myself, what indigenous ideas on the environment offer better approaches to human stewardship than this capitalistic mess we have gotten ourselves into?

As someone who has worked in the past within Christian theological circles that are oblivious to any other religious tradition’s teachings and how such teachings, if learned properly and respectfully, might yield some pretty good insights on the religious nature of the human being, I find it sad, tragic in fact, that we are still peddling particular worldviews that are willfully ignorant of the rich diversity of peoples and traditions that surround us every day.

Once in a while, I find a colleague or peer lost in wonderment when they finally do take notice of a tradition well outside of their own, and the insights it contains, but most of the academics I know spend too much of their time feeling like secret frauds because there is just so much that they don’t know, even about the topics on which they are so-called experts. I suppose it’s hard to learn about something completely foreign to you when you are too busy feeling insecure about your own identity. Or maybe that’s precisely when someone should dive into something wholly unknown to them, for it might have the power to shake up their world for the better.

Sometimes I find myself reminding my students that humanity has really only been attempting interreligious dialogue for somewhere around fifty years, so we really don’t have a clue yet about how the recognition of all this plurality will alter the course of humanity (though the fact that our youth are mainly dropping religion altogether and starting to ask questions about the rampant nonsense that previous generations have been up to is a pretty good sign of what’s to come). Then I look at the way in which certain philosophy departments haven’t typically recognized non-western philosophical traditions as what they should be teaching, and I know we still have a long way to go.

This book is my attempt to tie up some loose ends within my own field, pointing all the while toward horizons of conversation that have yet to be taken up more fully. It is therefore a book about being haunted by that which we have neglected, but which haunts us nonetheless, asking us to take notice and to consider life from a point of view we had previously refused to welcome.

Introduction

We are all haunted by something, perhaps something we know all-too-well but fear, or something we have repressed deep within so as to not have to face it, or maybe by something we have no conscious knowledge of, but which we flee from in terror nonetheless.

Every place we inhabit is a place already inhabited.¹ Every building, every land, is already filled—or overfilled—with so many presences that came there before us, whether we chose to acknowledge this reality or not. These presences living among us unseen are unconsciously at work in our representations of our lands, our houses, and even ourselves.

There are so many presences, interacting in such complex ways, that we are often not able to comprehend the vast networks of relations of which we are a part. We often have to reduce or restrict our representations of things, persons, and events in order to make sense of our world, reducing much fuller realities so that we might reach a shared understanding of some kind.

For this reason, much of what we deal with in our lives is often removed from our immediate reality, or our seeing. It is quite simply forgotten.² Taking the time to deal with the various things we have repressed, both in a historical sociocultural sense and on a personal level, constitutes a study in its own right, one perhaps psychological or hauntological, as the French philosopher Jacques Derrida once put it.³

The various social injustices humanity has historically faced (e.g., racial, gendered, class inequalities and oppressions, and so forth) are therefore immediately implicated within such a framework of the haunted.⁴ Like Toni Morrison’s character Sethe is haunted by the ghost Beloved, we are haunted by our crimes, by humanity’s crimes, by our own inhumanity, indeed the inhumanity that comprises our humanity.

There’s an old stand-up comedy routine that has been done by both Richard Pryor and Eddie Murphy, each invoking the same punchline. Essentially, the joke turns on the fact that most movies about haunted houses involve white people trying to stay in their homes, protect their property, and to fight the ghosts that haunt them, whereas black people hear strange voices telling them to get out and they immediately leave the scene, not waiting a minute to see what presence lurks there. It’s the white people who try to possess the haunted house itself, to conquer, control, suppress, or repress their ghosts, which they may have themselves created, whereas the black people have no business there, have nothing to prove or maybe to fight for in this sense, in order to possess what came before them.

What is the truth of the joke, as Freud would have it? White people have many ghosts with which they wrestle. Black people, though they may have any number of ghosts haunting them—such as the myriad legacies of historical injustice—do not have the same cultural memory haunting them in this land as white people do. Neither do Native Americans, or First Nations, for that matter, for they are themselves a diverse group with a much more complex relationship to the spirits that preceded all of us, a relationship more respectful and generally aware of its standing with regard to everything else around them. It is one thing to be haunted by the traumas you are willing to recognize because you demand justice in relation to them; it is another thing to cover over such traumas as if they did not happen.

vvv

What is a ghost exactly? It is soul. It is spirit. It is an immaterial thing yet affiliated with the principle of life, as the Oxford English Dictionary has it.

Gilbert Ryle, through his use of the phrase ghost in the machine, referred to the activity of the mind—a thing we have historically had much trouble relating to the materiality of the body.⁵ Our spirit, it would seem, has trouble being pinned down or located. Perhaps fittingly, then, as Thomas Hobbes made clear in one of the earliest uses of another sense of the word ghost, it is also an idol or Phantasme of the Imagination.⁶

A spirit, of course, as with a ghost, is a specter or an apparition, that which seemingly appears of its own accord and beyond the normal rules which govern the principle of life. This would make some sense then as to why our spirit, our essence, is not perceivable as it lies outside the principles which govern our bodies—yet it is perhaps in many ways no more than our bodies.

We can’t even begin to think the separation of spirit from our material, bodily reality. Yet spirit seems almost undeniable in terms of its existence. This is our unexplainable essence, spirit, or soul that permeates our bodily being and is at once equated to, and often portrayed as superior to, our material selves. Spirits appear, like ghosts, as that unexplainable excess to materiality that we are unable to define.⁷ This is probably the scariest thing we could say about our being-human: that something within us seems to exceed us.

So are there ghosts out there? What does it mean to say that we believe in them? Or, perhaps, more pointedly and informatively, what makes up our fear of ghosts? How do these disparate strands of intuitive (over)reaction motivate and drive us in all-too-human ways?

Understanding ourselves within a given context or spatial location means learning to see our ghosts. As Jeffrey Kripal has put it, understanding the role of the paranormal in our world is fundamentally a hermeneutical endeavor, because such a reading encodes an approach to the paranormal as meaning and story and insists on the interpreter’s creative role in the interpretation.⁸

Ghosts don’t come from nowhere—they have a history, they are a history. They are encoded within a particular representational and deeply historical economy that can be understood. They may lie at the limits of such an economy’s intelligibility, but they speak—albeit vaguely at times—of that economy’s functioning.

As Kripal argues, anomalies may also be the signals of the impossible, that is, signs of the end of one paradigm and the beginning of another.⁹ One economy ends, and another is born, though what seemed at first to lay outside the bounds of our understanding eventually came to be considered as the norm, a new norm for a new order. This is the nature of thought itself, and what Kripal sees as a sure sign that the sacred—our way of typically designating the creation of such an order—will not simply go away in the secular age in which we live. We are haunted by the sacred, even as we try to live without any sense of it.

Such a vision, as he goes on to outline, is what allows us to envision the sacred as a category within the structure of consciousness itself, not simply a stage along some progressive evolutionary path of human development.¹⁰ "Fact or fraud, trick or truth, whatever paranormal phenomena are, they clearly vibrate at the origin point of many popular religious beliefs, practices, and images—from beliefs in